On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:15 AM, Jonathan Gordon <jdgordy_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> We have a very high level of patch rot which is the same thing (some

but why do we have this high level of patch rot? Because all patches
in the tracker are crap or mediocre features? I don't think so. From
my impression the main problem with patches rotting is that (a) there
are quite some patches that aren't good enough to get included and the
author isn't willing to work for inclusion. We should consider closing
such tasks (yep, that's rejecting them too. But one needs to separate
between "rejected because author didn't work on getting it ready and
nobody else picked it up" and "rejected because it's unwanted for
whatever reason"). (b) It also seems (at least I kinda have the
impression) that quite a lot of devs like it better working on their
own stuff instead of checking the tracker and picking up existing
patches. This doesn't surprise me at all and kinda goes back to (a) as
this usually means the one picking up a patch needs to get it into
shape -- I haven't seen much patches that got in unchanged (except
ones done by devs). Of course there is also (c) mediocre features that
are likely to be cause of a larger discussion. It doesn't seem there
is much will upon devs to adopt such a patch and actually start a
discussion about it. Heck, I haven't seen actual *discussions* about
*patches* on this list!

There are some general directions we do agree about without taking it
to this list separately as those are big issues that have been
addressed on IRC several times (like: we do want multifont). But those
are not the problematic issues, especially as you already said as
there are currently no patches about those so no need to discuss them
in detail (yet).

Besides, if there are objections in IRC after a commit this pretty
much smells like the actual pre-commit discussion wasn't done at all.
Arguing around with the people that are currently around is nice, but
(as I already said) due to timezone and RL issues you will always cut
those people that don't have time *the moment the debate is going on*,
not giving those people a change to raise their voice. Are you really
surprised if they do afterwards (as they hadn't a real chance before
the commit)?